RAISE THE BANNER
The NBA announced on Monday that it has conducted its tiebreaking procedures for the upcoming NBA Draft Lottery. You’ll never believe this, as the Mavericks lottery history is well documented, but the Dallas Mavericks won the coin flip against the Chicago Bulls.
Five ties among teams with identical regular-season records were broken today through random drawings to determine the order of selection for NBA Draft 2025 presented by State Farm. pic.twitter.com/FExaNFXF2B
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) April 21, 2025
Because of this, the Mavericks hold a slightly better 1.8% chance at winning the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, with a nearly 9% chance at jumping into the top four of the NBA Draft. While winning the tiebreaker only nominally improved the Mavericks chance at jumping up in the lottery, the real value is in holding the 11th pick in the order instead of 12th, if they don’t jump into the top four.
The back end of the lottery is a wonderful place to find high level talent. Over the past ten drafts, here is a small selection of players who have been taken in picks 10-14.
- Cason Wallace (10th, 2023)
- Mikal Bridges (10th, 2018)
- Cam Johnson (11th, 2019)
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (11th, 2018)
- Malik Monk (11th, 2017)
- Domantas Sabonis (11th, 2016)
- Dereck Lively (12th, 2023)
- Jalen Williams (12th, 2022)
- Tyrese Haliburton (12th, 2020)
- PJ Washington (12th, 2019)
- Tyler Herro (13th, 2019)
- Donovan Mitchell (13th, 2017)
- Devin Booker (13th, 2015)
- Michael Porter Jr. (14th, 2018)
- Bam Adebayo (14th, 2017)
As you can see, there are All-NBA caliber players available in the back end of the lottery to go along with the plug and play role players. The Mavericks, assuming they hold onto this pick, are going to have the chance to draft a player in this spot who can be an immediate contributor. It was less than a year ago when Dereck Lively was anchoring a defense through the Western Conference playoffs. With Dallas already bumped pretty firmly against the first apron of the salary cap, it’s vital for them to bring in young players who can contribute on rookie deals. This draft is the first step.